Well here we are again, folks, going back to “Deadwood” to revisit season 2 of David Milch’s epic revisionist Western. Just as we did last summer (and as I did for the three seasons of “The Wire” I reviewed after the fact), we’re going to have two parallel discussions going at once: identical reviews, but one where the comments section is just for people who are new to the series and don’t want to be spoiled on anything past the events of the episode being discussed, and one for people who know “Deadwood” backwards and forwards, and want to be able to discuss it all at once. This is the veteran-friendly version; click here for the newbie-safe one.

Though future reviews will be done one episode at a time, we’re opening up with a combined review of the season’s first two hours, “A Lie Agreed Upon” parts 1 & 2, coming up just as soon as I would settle for a vigorous hand-holding…

“Welcome to fuckin’ Deadwood! It can be combative.” -Al

Though the two halves of “A Lie Agreed Upon” aired on separate nights, they were very clearly constructed as one super-sized episode of “Deadwood.” Like most of the series’ installments, the two hours take place over the course of the same day, and all of the stories and character threads continue through both parts. There’s no cliffhanger at the end of the first hour as you often get with two-part episodes, and Bullock leaving his wife’s arms for his mistress’ doesn’t resolve much of anything, but simply increases the level of internal conflict both Seth and Alma will be wrestling with throughout the second hour. In every way but how it was scheduled, this was a single episode of the show (both halves even shared director Ed Bianchi, which isn’t always easy to do on a weekly production schedule), and we’re going to discuss it as such.

The title comes from a famous saying (most frequently attributed to Napoleon) that history is a lie agreed upon – that future generations don’t want to know how bloody and debased and selfish most of the big decisions were, so the people making those decisions concoct a more pleasing fiction. It’s been the show’s governing philosophy from the beginning, in the way that it shows how a community might require a public face like Seth Bullock even as all the important decisions about its growth are being made by a man like Al Swearengen.

There are many lies being told throughout these two hours, but not all of them have been agreed to by anyone but the person telling them. There’s the lie Al keeps telling about his problems urinating, which nobody quite believes, and which only seems to become more of a problem after the fight with Seth. There’s Calamity Jane’s insistence on her own ill health, despite Doc Cochran finding nothing to the contrary, because Martha Jane Canary is depressed and self-loathing and doesn’t find herself fit company for others. And there’s the web of lies involved in Joanie setting up the high-end Chez Ami brothel across town, and arranging for fellow madam Maddie to come into town to help run it, despite Cy’s many objections to the whole endeavor.

The most important lie for our story involves the ongoing Seth/Alma affair, which has distracted Seth from whatever Al was hoping he might accomplish when he produced the tin in the first season finale. It’s a lie that the entire camp has seemingly agreed to – the two of them raise such a ruckus with their lovemaking that poor Sophia can’t even eat in peace with her new governess Miss Isringhausen – and when a frustrated Al loudly alludes to the truth while calling down to Seth on the thoroughfare, it’s all Sheriff Bullock can do to keep from charging into the Gem to demand satisfaction in that very second. Seth carries himself as a man with a strict moral code, yet he’s been cheating on his wife – even if he only married her out of pity and love for his fallen brother – for months and can’t stand to hear either himself or his special lady friend impugned by the likes of Al.

We began the series with the implication that Seth would be the white hat and Al the black hat, but their relationship, and their respective roles within the camp, grew far more complicated than that, and the war that seemed inevitable never really happened. Instead, the two men get unspeakably violent with each other – in an incredible, ugly, prolonged, completely unglamorous fight scene(*) – not over money, or the life of Alma or Sophia, but because Al is mad at Governor Pennington and Seth is mad at himself for living a lie, and because the other man makes a convenient, willing punching bag.

(*) And it’s one that, like many great “Deadwood” moments, is preceded by a lot of what Jane would call triangulation, as various characters move in and out of the Gem, each being aware of each other’s position and movements so they know where to start shooting in the event trouble jumps off. And when that happens, you see that Dan is the only one who has any idea what he’s doing, as both Sol and Charlie get themselves shot by a clumsy, panicked Johnny.

Their brawl starts in Al’s office, spills out onto his balcony, and then over the railing onto the muddy thoroughfare below. Seth’s youth, size and lack of previous ailment seem prepared to give him the victory until Dan runs out to cold cock him, and ultimately Seth’s life is saved by the very thing that makes it a much, much bigger mess: the arrival on the stagecoach of his wife Martha and his adopted son William. (“Cow-eyed kid looking out from that coach,” Al will later complain. “That’s what unmanned me.”)

Martha’s unannounced trip to Deadwood, and her arrival just as Seth is in mortal jeopardy and badly injured, leads to a simultaneously mortifying and hilarious scene at the hardware store, where Mrs. Garrett not only insists on paying her lover and his wife and son a visit, but doing so in a scarlet red dress lacking only a letter A embroidered on her breast to make the point plainer. The lies continue throughout the scene: Alma lying to herself that this is in any way a good idea, everyone else biting their tongues about what a gross miscalculation this is, Seth lying to both Alma and Martha about what he’d previously written home about this woman (and Martha agreeing to play along, until they’re finally away from the other woman and she loses her patience with the game), and only poor Ellsworth coming even slightly close to doing anything to stop this trainwreck.

And faced with his wife and son as flesh-and-blood evidence of what he believes to be his deep moral failure, Seth sets two plans in place at once. In one, he talks Alma into leaving the camp with him immediately, rather than stay and deal with the lie of his marriage to his brother’s wife. But it’s hard to imagine him ever having the guts to go through with that one, since his second plan involves arranging a suicide-by-crook where Al, Dan, Johnny or someone else in that crew puts him out of his misery and keeps him from having to choose between his morals (and his feelings for his dead brother) and his passions.

It takes Al a while to realize this is what Seth is up to, in part because Al’s brain doesn’t work the way Seth’s does, in part because the injuries sustained in the fight take him from minor discomfort to sheer agony. (Along with a look that renders him as a grotesque, or possibly even a Picasso painting.) To borrow a metaphor from another HBO show of the period, where Seth is playing checkers, Al is always playing chess. The camp needs Bullock – preferably a Bullock with his head on straight – which means that Al needs him, which means that he can simply give him back his gun and badge, rather than giving Seth the fight, and possibly death, he’s itching for.

And while this is going on, we see Alma wrestling with the decision of whether to run away with her beloved protector. Where it’s hard to imagine Seth going through with it, Alma seems to be seriously considering the idea until Miss Isringhausen – who doesn’t know Seth very well, nor of his feelings for Sophia – convinces her that Seth meant to take Alma and only Alma out of the camp. Is that a lie? We don’t know at this point, but it’s the truth that Alma decides she has to accept before closing the curtain in full view of Seth, giving him all the message he needs of her intentions.

Though Seth can be hot-tempered and self-righteous, it’s hard not to feel sympathy for him as his world closes in on him, particularly in the scenes leading up to his aborted showdown with Al in the second hour. Charlie may or may not realize what Seth’s intentions are in going to reclaim his gun and badge, but he knows something is wrong with his friend and boss, so he comes up with a lie about feeling faint to force Seth to help him back to the freight store. And once there, Seth opens up about his brother, then opens up some waterworks as he thinks about this whole mess he’s gotten into. (Charlie tries to leave Seth to his tears with one more lie about having to pass gas – one of several fart jokes sprinkled through the two hours – but is interrupted by Jane showing up at the exact wrong moment to yell and moan and tell off-color stories.)

Again, “A Lie Agreed Upon” feels like one episode that takes up two hours, but there’s also something of a parallel structure between the way each hour ends. In the first, we hear Seth’s voice reading the much-discussed letter he wrote to Marth, which is 95% carpentry details, followed by a brief, dry promise to try to live up to his brother’s example as husband to her and father to William. None of it is a lie, but Seth’s need to spend so much time talking about the floor joists and his choice of wood speaks volumes about how difficult he finds it to demonstrate romantic feelings for Martha. In the second, the voiceover comes courtesy of Al, who is once again essentially dictating the lead story for the next edition of the Deadwood Pioneer to A.W. Merrick. Merrick wants to report the truth about what goes on in the camp, but he’s always on the outside looking in, and when in this case Al is willing to offer up the truth and tell him what caused the fracas, it’s too much for Merrick (or his readers) to handle, and Al shifts into a gentler (but still fairly accurate) account of how the day ended, closing with an unapologetic advertisement for the Gem itself.

When the history of Deadwood is written, no one is going to want to know that the town’s first (real) sheriff and its first major business owner nearly killed each other over a conflict that the businessman would lay “at cunt’s doorstep.” The camp has far bigger problems to worry about right now, but when you’re Al Swearengen – mayor in all but title, a man whose business interests are now inextricably linked with the interests of the camp at large, and the only man on the thoroughfare who can seemingly think straight all the time (even if he can’t always piss straight, or at all) – you have to solve the little ones before you can get to the big ones, and wrap it all up in a pretty bow for public consumption.

Some other thoughts:

* Ricky Jay left the cast abruptly in between seasons, so Eddie is replaced at Cy’s gaming tables by Con Stapleton, while Eddie’s role in getting the Chez Ami off the ground has to be dealt with in a few lines of exposition. But even with Jay’s exit, the cast is still well-populated, and gets several new faces, including a pre-“Breaking Bad” Anna Gunn as Martha Bullock, Alice Krige as Maddie and Sarah Paulson as Miss Isringhausen.

* Another lie agreed upon: everyone in the camp who cared about Reverend Smith knew that he was in no shape by the end to wander down the road and be murdered by heathens, but they’ve accepted Al’s cover story because they realize that Al put the poor, sweet man out of his suffering.

* Sol doped to the gills after his wounding is great, not only because it gives John Hawkes an opportunity to be funny in a different way from his wry observations in season 1, but because it finally gives Sol license to tell his beloved but difficult partner what he thinks of him. Hawkes is too good an actor to be reduced to playing Seth’s easy-going sidekick, and these were good episodes for him.

* One of Milch’s weaknesses is a tendency to construct stories involving people going on and on about people and events far off in the distance of time or space. With “Luck,” it was Walter Smith’s tortured history in Kentucky. With “Deadwood,” it’s whatever’s going on back in Yankton with the politicians who will decide the future of the camp. Ian McShane and Titus Welliver are such good actors that those scenes often work in spite of how abstract and remote the discussion becomes, but all the remote speculation about Yankton is one of the few flaws in what’s generally considered the best of the series’ three seasons.

* The sad, violent, confusing saga of Bummer Dan and Slippery Dan provides a distraction in each hour for Seth and Adams, respectively, and also gives Leon Rippy the chance to utter one of the sickest, funniest lines of the series when he watches Adams kill Slippery Dan by ramming him into a mounted animal head and groans, “Oh, he just 12-pointed Slippery Dan!”

* Slippery Dan winds up collateral damage in the rivalry between Adams and Dan Dority, which plays out very much like a strong older brother pouting because daddy has favored his smart younger sibling. As tough as Dan Dority is, he’s also human, you know? And Milch continues to have fun with Adams’ quick, sarcastic wit, which sets up the great exchange where Al says, “Over time, your quickness with a cocky rejoinder ust have gotten you many punches in the face,” and Adams replies, “Depends on what you call ‘many.'”

* It’s been a while since I’ve watched these episodes (so please forgive me the odd mistake relating to information we may get later), and I’d forgotten the brilliant E.B. Farnum impression that Ian McShane busts out late in the first hour. (Speaking of impressions, if you have the complete series box set, it contains one of my all-time favorite special features, in which Titus Welliver proves himself to be an expert mimic, not only of famous actors playing “Deadwood” characters, but of David Milch himself. It’s brilliant.)

* E.B.’s “Let me suss out the new trim, Johnny, before I earn some added rebuke” may not be the best line Milch ever wrote, but it might be the sentence that best captures the many quirks of his writing style.

Finally, for those of you reading the veteran version now (or newbies who want to eventually read the veteran comments), I want to once again welcome and thank “Deadwood” castmember Jim Beaver, who will again be offering his own memories of the series in the comments. Jim should be in Guadalcanal right now as part of some world travels, so it may be a bit before his “A Lie Agreed Upon” comments turn up, but if they’re anything like last year’s, they will be well worth the wait. And if you want to thank Jim for the service, he’s selling personalized autographed copies of his memoir, “Life’s That Way,” on his website.

Coming up next: “New Money,” in which a familiar actor returns in an unfamiliar role, while Al’s health remains in question.

You know you are obsessed with Alan’s reviews, especially the Rewinds, when you read the full review without having seen the episodes in over a year! Can’t wait to start rewatching along with Alan and the rest of you. Such a great, great series.

Alan – no “Veterans Only” section where you discuss how events from this episode play out down the road???

By: sepinwall

06.01.2012 @ 2:17 PM

I didn’t do that last year, either. As I said above, my memory of what’s to come isn’t quite as strong as it was for The Wire. Everything clicks back into place as I watch it, but there are fewer clues to what’s coming — especially since Milch was never as remotely meticulous a planner as David Simon.

By: sepinwall

06.01.2012 @ 2:37 PM

It’s to separate the commenters so newbies don’t get spoiled while vets can talk about everything.

By: Dan3320

06.01.2012 @ 5:02 PM

Forgot you didn’t do it last year. I have been re-watching The Wire and thus re-reading your rewinds and I guess I’m just used to that format.

By: Dignan

06.01.2012 @ 2:23 PM

Just an FYI, the heading says “Season 1”.

By: sepinwall

06.01.2012 @ 2:37 PM

And that’s now been fixed, thanks.

By: itrainmonkeys

06.01.2012 @ 2:37 PM

Reply to comment…

By: itrainmonkeys

06.01.2012 @ 2:38 PM

Yup. I got excited thinking he was breezing through the 1st season before starting up the 2nd lol. Oh well

By: Ed

06.02.2012 @ 5:40 AM

Also, when referring to the Adams/Al exchange, it should read “must.”

By: seamer

06.01.2012 @ 3:37 PM

Weird question: One thing about the layout of the Gem set has always bugged me. The balcony outside of Al’s office is portrayed as facing the main thoroughfare. But with the position of the door to the office, wouldn’t the balcony really be facing a side street?

By: Don

06.01.2012 @ 4:48 PM

I don’t think so. You walk in the gem with your back to the thoroughfare, turn left to get on the first set of stairs, turn left again after the first set (putting you facing the thoroughfare again).

Get to the top, go left a little, then face right to Al’s door. Once you’re hrough that door you’re facing the balcony,over the thoroughfare.

I did this off the top of my head and am a little concerned blu how easily I could see the gem in my mind. I’ve seen this show WAYYYYY too much.

Hope that helps though.

By: Ed

06.02.2012 @ 5:41 AM

Correct, Don.

The door to Al’s office is above the main entrance to the Gem.

By: Norgard

06.05.2012 @ 8:46 PM

To add to that: early in “Something Very Expensive”, when Trixie cuts the line to Al’s office, there’s a shot showing that the corner to the right of Al’s office door does not lead directly to the stairs (as it would have to if Al’s office were facing the side street).

In “A Two-Headed Beast”, there’s also a fairly clear shot of Al coming out of his office (to tell Dan to fight the Captain) above the entrance.

By: Hatfield

06.01.2012 @ 3:39 PM

I’ve yet to get my DVDs back, and I’m apparently too lazy to set up HBO GO, so I’m going off of memory. That said, I think this two-parter may be the episode(s) I’ve seen the most, and probably my favorite of the whole run. The Al/Seth interactions are all perfect, especially when Al realizes he’s pushed a little too far and tries to mollify Bullock in his own, antagonistic way. The Dan/Adams stuff is great, and helps remind me of a time when Silas was more formidable.

I guess I don’t have much to say, except it feels good to put my brain back in this world.

(Speaking of Welliver’s amazing impression/audition reel, he was interviewed by the AV Club yesterday and spoke almost exclusively of Deadwood and Milch. There’s also a video of the audition bonus feature. Spoilers for future developments, of course: [www.avclub.com])

By: MirrorGirl

06.05.2012 @ 7:37 AM

On which disk can this feature be found? I have the boxed sets for all 3 seasons, but can’t find it. Thank you!

By: Hatfield

06.05.2012 @ 5:11 PM

It’s actually on the complete series DVD set, though as I mentioned above and Alan did below, it’s available online.

By: A.S.

06.01.2012 @ 3:43 PM

Huzzah! It’s so nice to have some more thoughtful, in-depth analysis of my favorite show. And thank you in advance, Mr. Beaver, for your comments! What a privelege to have such a frank and interesting look behind the scenes.

By: Stealth

06.01.2012 @ 4:21 PM

“Another lie agreed upon: everyone in the camp who cared about Reverend Smith knew that he was in no shape by the end to wander down the road and be murdered by heathens, but they’ve accepted Al’s cover story because they realize that Al put the poor, sweet man out of his suffering. ”

I only noticed this on the rewatch, but I don’t get it. Why cover it up so elaborately? Why couldn’t have just died of natural causes, as Al told Doc?

The only thing I can think is that Doc wanted the corpse for dissection. I mean, did they not even have a funeral for the guy? Did he end up with Wu’s pigs?

By: NotMyDayJob

06.01.2012 @ 4:40 PM

Reply to comment…

By: NotMyDayJob

06.01.2012 @ 5:03 PM

In the world of history books in which we, the audience, live, the real life version of Reverend Smith was ne’er recorded to have suffered any such malady as afflicted Milch’s Deadwood’s Rev, but the record does quite clearly state that he (Reverend Smith, not Milch) was found shot dead by the side of the road between Deadwood and Spearfish. The elaborate cover-up in form of a simple-yet-compassionate lie is Al’s way of giving the Rev a dignified send-off befitting a man whose contribution to the camp’s spiritual welfare may have been somewhat short-lived but was inarguably both passionate and compassionate.

That lie, in the bigger picture of the episode itself, is Milch’s reiteration of the oft quoted axiom that “History is naught but a lie agreed upon” as informs the series itself as a greater whole: that what the history books may teach us about everything from the demise of Wild Bill Hickok (his supposed “Dead Man’s Hand” of aces and eights being a widely accepted legend based on pure fabrication as any real-life resident of modern-day Deadwood will assure you ad nauseum) to the ultimate fate of Reverend Smith is available to the fictional interpretations he has rendered upon them for the sake of dramatizing a series if for no other reason than because our only historical records of the true rendering such events spring from the potentially tainted waters of first-hand recollections and historical “documents” as were (are) all—particularly in the ill monitored/recorded environment of a lawless frontier like Deadwood—subject to the civic-minded rearrangement and/or personally motivated lies of those who recorded said history.

That in the reality of Reverend Smith’s otherwise predominantly undocumented life in Deadwood, the documented fate he suffers according to the history books (being shot dead by the side of the road between Spearfish and Deadwood) might just as easily be a lie agreed upon as the historical truth of the matter being Milch’s point there; and the turn of events he relates in the show’s episodic arc from the onset of Smith’s brain tumor to his inglorious death by means of merciful murder, the articulation of that point to the depiction of an arguable example.

By: youtalkfunny

06.02.2012 @ 9:00 AM

NotMyDayJob,

You know you could have said all that in about 15 words, right?

By: JMRII

06.19.2012 @ 7:23 PM

I actually didn’t realize that there were other real-life characters in Deadwood besides Wild Bill- was there also a real Al Swearingen and Seth Bullock, etc?

By: JesseSP

06.01.2012 @ 5:23 PM

AV Club has an interview club with Titus Welliver that features an embed of that impressions clip from the box set. Hilarious!

When I rewatched the series with a friend, I made him watch Milch’s touring Deadwood after the series ended (“On the Nature if Endings” or something) first so he would see how great Welliver is in that featurette.

By: the minister

06.04.2012 @ 6:23 PM

Holy CRAP.

Titus Welliver is a goddamn GENIUS.

Seriously folks, you really gotta watch that. The writing is almost as good as his impersonations.

By: alynch

06.07.2012 @ 1:19 AM

There was also a scene in “Big Apple” (underrated) where Welliver did Brando, De Niro, and Walken impressions.

By: WaltEagle

06.01.2012 @ 5:47 PM

I have never observed anything resembling a remotely dominant opinion on the best season. I would have guessed season 1, if anything.

By: joel

06.02.2012 @ 10:47 PM

Yes, now that it’s been canonized in print I’m going to watch this season more carefully. I was going into this thinking Deadwood slowly diminished over time, but if Alan and others like season 2 best then I’m paying special attention. And when I saw “diminished over time,” let me be clear: even in its weaker episodes, this is still one of the best shows on TV. Ever.

By: Oaktown Girl

06.03.2012 @ 7:49 PM

Here are my personal feelings about which is the “best season” (Season 1 vs. Season 2):
I love this show so much it actually pains me when people feel the need to make an absolute declaration about which season is the “best”, and therfore anyone with at least half a brain needs to agree with that. (An Opinion Agreed Upon?).

I definitely understand the arguments for Season 2, no question about it. But there are just so many elements in Season 1 that move me so profoundly, if I could have only one Deadwood Season for the rest of my life, it’d be that one. And people who think I’m stupid or “lesser than” for feeling that way SUCK COCK BY CHOICE!

By: youtalkfunny

06.01.2012 @ 6:03 PM

I remember an interview with Earl Brown saying Milch’s instructions to those choreographing the Dority-Turner fight included, “…and I want to see something I’ve never seen before.”

Well, this episode’s fights included things I’ve never seen before. The first time I saw Al and Bullock go over the railing, I sat bolt upright in my chair and shouted, “Whoa!’

…and oh yeah, he just 12-pointed Slippery Dan!

By: youtalkfunny

06.01.2012 @ 6:06 PM

Oh, and thanks, Alan. I’ve been hoping since last summer that we’d be doing exactly this, this summer!

By: Deadwoodian

06.05.2012 @ 3:22 PM

Oops, sorry about the lack of a comment there – I’m new here. I worked on the show as a background player all three seasons. I can tell you something about David you’ve probably never heard before.

David was more involved as a writer producer and creator in this show than I’ve ever seen, by any other person, in any other show. There were times where he would come out to set in the middle of the night and SHOW the actors what he wanted in the scene. In this episode specifically where Sol gets shot, he got down on the muddy ground at about 1AM and showed John Hawkes exactly what he wanted done in the scene.

David is without question one of the kindest, biggest hearted people I’ve ever had the pleasure to work for. Every person who worked on the show knows this about him. There were even several of us that he sent to acting classes and paid for them! He also gave some of us instruction on writing. This was my greatest experience by far on any production, and it was so upsetting that HBO chose not to keep the show going.

Jim Beaver will echo my statement, I’m sure, that the show could have continued on (without David doing the day to day), because he trained EVERYONE involved so well. He cultivated a family atmosphere on the set. There were no divisions or separate classes of people as exists on many other shows. This is why the quality of the production was so superb. David would still have overseen everything; but, he wanted to get another show going and branch out.

If you want evidence of what I say here see the History Channel’s three part miniseries Hatfields & McCoys. One of the writers from our show (Ted Mann) was the screen/story writer on that. You will see some similarities in the way the dialogue is written.

By: 7s Tim

06.01.2012 @ 6:52 PM

Between “C**t-struck” and Bullock’s “Watch it” and the Bullock-Swearengen exchange “Be where I can find ya” “I ain’t going no place,” I think this is the episode I quote most often.

By: Hatfield

06.01.2012 @ 7:17 PM

And McShane’s delivery of that last one is just so sinister. God, how he didn’t win the Emmy every is beyond my ability to rationalize.

By: NotMyDayJob

06.01.2012 @ 7:01 PM

To offer another option to your well-appointed metaphor of “where Seth is playing checkers, Al is always playing chess,” I’d notion a more accurate rendition of the gamesmanship in play – unfettered of necessity to remain parallel to the original source quote as I am — that Seth’s more a poker man to Al’s proficiency at chess … my thinking of as much being based on the inherent volatility so oft associated with the flashier personalities as cleave to poker/gambling to define their futures and the equally oft-associated failure of self assessment as leads to tragic end for so many poker players as would win big off one hand by combination of skill and luck only to lose at even greater stakes in the long term over lack of discipline and big-picture thinking.

Olyphant’s Seth, like Gedrick’s Jerry (Luck), are both self destructive sorts who repeatedly fall prey to the siren call of grandiose short term gains while teetering at the precipice of disaster off ever being but a single hand away losing everything. They draw to winning hands at great risk while seeking to sate the drive to self destruct by wagering life and limb on Luck as they often do not enjoy, and in doing so, rarely if ever consider the greater picture of how their actions affect the future of their own lives, let alone the lives of others. Each suffers the full weight of their own brilliance in how oft those outsized skills (Seth’s speed/skill with a gun; Jerry’s handicapping advantage) save them at one turn only to destroy them at the next; and each is ever playing the hand they are dealt to the win or lose without apparent regard to how the fate of an individual hand might be better considered to a long-term gain … how embracing the discipline to sacrifice the battle now and again in service of some greater strategy might put the war itself to their tally over Yankton’s or Chan’s.

To the compare of Checkers as it relates to Poker, a game of successful Checkers usually requires not only a capacity to anticipate an opponents moves as those moves relate to the long term, but also a relatively healthy dollop of strategic consideration of one’s own actions to the agenda of lining one’s ducks up for successful jumping. Seth suffers on both those fronts, far more qualified to the inherent volatility of high-stakes poker, an aficionado of all-in, balls-to-the-wall betting (in service of good cards OR a bluff) to the end of either winning big or losing big, his follow-up to either result being to approach the next hand dealt as if it is, like all others, a game separate and apart from future and past, that singular hand’s potential to fortune or doom defined solely by a combination of the player’s own skill and the fickle fortunes of Luck as she’d spin a particular turn of events to the positive or the negative of his moment-by-moment agenda, defining whatever result as befalls his play to be at once fully within his control and fully outside of it (to his own thinking), giving a man of Seth’s particular nature the ability to at once claim pride in victory and decry responsibility in failures, only seeing the bigger picture of his own hand as the architect of both in more reflective moments as find him sitting on the porch, discussing the days events with someone like Sol, a man Seth respects more than he respects himself and thus a man to whom Seth will be more wholly truthful than he can ever be to himself in any accounting of self-defined worth and lack thereof.

By: blackhills74

06.01.2012 @ 7:07 PM

This is probably my favorite episode out of the series from a great title to great writing, acting and of course best fight (next to A Two Headed Beast ) I remember when this episode aired I was so excited about Deadwood getting a second season and finally getting to see Seth and Al finally coming head to head literally in an awesome fight. I’ve saw this episode at least 50 times and it never gets old#Deadwood

By: NotMyDayJob

06.01.2012 @ 7:18 PM

At risk of rattling on, I’d also note that Al’s emotionality concerning family is put to articulate display in this episode. At once willing to cut the throat of a squarehead child as has been rendered from all family, such callous murder self justified a necessary action to protect the proceeds of his highwayman robbery sideline, and recurrently willing to whore out orphans for purpose of his own profit; this episode twice paints Swearengen a man vulnerable to the sanctity of family over his own agenda: once when he spares Seth’s life not in service of his own strategic agenda but rather for purpose of finding himself unwilling to cut the throat of a father in full view of his watching child and once when he steps up against the pressure of his own druthers to render a merciful end to Reverend Smith’s suffering … a man Al has previously bonded to as proxy to his own brother, like afflicted by similar fits but less mercifully treated by a younger Al who put that brother’s public debasement and personal suffering to a profit agenda rather than rendering alleviation as he now offers, in apparent penance, to his brother’s proxy.

By: malicedoom

06.01.2012 @ 7:27 PM

So great to have these back. Excellent job!

By: brucek2

06.01.2012 @ 7:49 PM

There’s another great line that appears only in the DVD commentary: Anna Gunn quotes Billy Richardson as having said to her “You know, for every 30 people in this business who hate me, there’s another 50 who don’t know me.” Always cracks me up.

By: brucek2

06.01.2012 @ 7:50 PM

oops, sorry, that should’ve been Billy Sanderson.

By: briguyx

06.01.2012 @ 10:22 PM

Recently I decided to catch up with all the great TV dramas I missed. Started with “Deadwood” and just finished “The Shield” and am in the middle of “The Wire,” so those reviews will come in handy!

Quite enjoyed “Deadwood.” Always thought Seth was a little too hot headed as a character, as he gets mad at every little slight, a la Michael J. Fox when you call him yellow in the “Back To The Future” movies. Tim gets to be much more subtle in “Justified.”

Due to changed hair color and dressing down, it often took me a while to realize that was Sarah Paulson or Kristin Bell on the show. I’d recognize their voices and think, “I know her from somewhere!”

By: Contact_Light

06.01.2012 @ 11:45 PM

Absolutely agree that this two-parter was a great way to kick into the second season. It’s been a while since I watched it, so I may be misremembering, but doesn’t it start with the installation of the telegraph poles? A neat little metaphor for the unstoppable march of technology, the bringing of news from elsewhere and, most notably, the coming of The-Boy-The-Earth-Talks-To, whose arrival in Deadwood is telegraphed fearfully a long time before it actually happens.

*runs off to gather DVDs from shelf*

By: mgrabois

06.02.2012 @ 5:42 AM

Deadwood left such a strong impression on me that when I see the actors in other roles – many of them on LOST, for example, or Powers Boothe in the recent “Hatfields & McCoys” – that it draws me out of the show for a moment while I think “Hey, it’s that guy (or gal) from Deadwood!”

By: Ed

06.02.2012 @ 6:03 AM

Another great Complete Series DVD feature is “The Meaning of Endings,” where Milch takes the viewer through the thoroughfare for a tour and gives some insight in to what would have become of the fourth season.

Also, when I was a student at MIT, I attended an interview/commentary session that featured David Milch. It was around 90 minutes long, and it offers perhaps the greatest insight in to David’s mind I think I’ve ever seen or read. David gave some great commentary on network vs. cable programming, managing a writing staff, his strong dislike for the Bush Administration, and also dropped a few hints about what would have happened to our beloved characters in season four.

These videos are free as they have been set up to enrich the forums for MIT art students. Unfortunately, there’s no hyperlinking in these forums, so you’ll have to copy/paste these addresses in to your browser’s address bar.

BTW, all of you who subscribe to HBO/Comcast can watch all 36 Deadwood episodes on you computer, go to [xfinitytv.comcast.net]

By: Oaktown Girl

06.05.2012 @ 1:52 AM

YouTalkFunny – hey, thanks for posting that info, I had no idea. That’s great news. Now I don’t have to go off memory!

Thanks to Ed, too, for your MIT Arts info. Will check it out.

By: Artemis

06.02.2012 @ 9:26 AM

Ohh I love Summer Rewatch season! I am looking forward to hearing everyone’s viewpoints on this show. I love how brutal and real the violence is in this episode. It’s so visceral. you can feel every blow. It’s just great.

By: JedyKnight

06.02.2012 @ 8:04 PM

I always loved the start of SWs2 (which like many others i agree is the best season.. Due to the non-existance of Season 4 which i think could have top it with all the setup done on S 3, and how many creators bring out their best if they know far in advance that it will be their last), but i digress, I love it because i know many viewers felt at the end of S1 that they got cheated out of a great wild wild west-style showdown between the Hero (Seth) and the villain (Al), with what could have felt like an anticlimatic ending in S1.. I for one think that Milch decided to start S2 by giving the audience what they think they want, starting with the brutal fight, and ending with a tense a standoff, as a way of saying if these 2 titans clash one of them will surely end up dead, most probably Seth, since he is too hotheaded and Al is not only more calculated but also isnt afraid of fighting dirty. So after we see this, and certainly fear the Season will start with a shocking death that will change the whole story, Milch then has us and the characters understand that the success of the story/town depends on this polar opposites learning to coexist, and later joining forces against those worse evils to come.

By: joel

06.02.2012 @ 10:55 PM

Alan, thank you dropping in the off-hand quote from the Wire. Watching this episode made me realize how much these two shows have in common thematically, as each takes great care and interest in detailing and laying bare all the careful machinations that create our urban society and culture. Where as The Wire laments the slow, painful death and destruction of the American city, Deadwood illustrates how those cities might have been founded and how all those corrupt institutions would come to be, preyed upon by larger forces at work, from national politicians to capitalists.

Stringer Bell and Al Swearengen have a lot in common (although Seth Bullock and Jimmy McNulty are a little farther afield from each other).

It’s sort of mind-boggling to think that Deadwood, The Wire, The Sopranos, and Six Feet Under were all on the same network at the same time. We are so damn lucky to be witnessing it too.

By: Martin

06.04.2012 @ 4:58 AM

Alan, you need to watch the DVD version of 02.01 with commentary — McShane explains that “Can be combative” was a stage direction regarding the “Welcome to fuckin’ Deadwood” line. Assuming he’s being honest, it’s one of the best ad-libs in television history.

By: MirrorGirl

06.05.2012 @ 7:42 AM

What’s annoying about doing this is that now I just HAVE to watch the whole bloody series again, despite having just done so. And it’s summer and I should be outdoors in the garden. Or doing something besides drawing the curtains and watching TV, but my god, this show was great. The last time I watched it was just to immerse myself in Milch’s dialogue–I’d been watching a lot of Shakespeare and it seemed a natural progression.

By: MirrorGirl

06.05.2012 @ 7:46 AM

Now I just have to watch the whole bleeding series again, even though I did just a few months ago, when I did so simply to immerse myself in Milch’s dialogue after reading and watching lots of Shakespeare–a natural progression. Even just reading about the show makes it necessary to get the disks out and write off any number of hours that should be spent out of doors in the sunshine. It was so good. Possibly the best-written TV show ever. I love watching Timothy Olyphant in Justified, but Seth Bullock is still unmatched.

By: Roley

06.05.2012 @ 2:48 PM

Milch’s weakness being discussions about other places / events ? Al’s speech to Trixie the morning after she is back from trying to hurt herself about who these people are and the only way to deal with them is excellent.

Not sure exactly what the scene is in this episode but the sense of impending and inevitable changes from the outside has to be established. Deadwood didn’t lose ground here, if anything it allowed more of an insight into how and why Al operates and in the choices he makes re Bullock and others.

By: Norgard

06.05.2012 @ 9:33 PM

Count me as another one who prefers the first season to all others. And unlike some here, I won’t hesitate to say that season two and three were a significant step down from the first, for reasons we’ll mostly get to know next episode. On the other hand if we’re talking about individual episodes, “A Lie Agreed Upon 1 & 2” is in my opinion the show’s single (dual?) finest hour(s).

A good part of that is, I think, how thematically focused the episode is. All major and minor plots seem to come back to the same few interconnected themes of (self-)deception and transference: obviously Seth and Al are distorted mirror images of each other here. Dan’s uneasiness with the more sophisticated Adams mirrors Al’s uneasiness with the complicated scheming in Yankton. Like Al and Seth, Dan transfers his aggressions to a convenient target, causing Adams to do the same (and of course the final victim in that chain, Slippery Dan, has his own subplot about people taking out their anger on the wrong person).

(I don’t know if this was cut completely or transferred (sic!) to a later episode, but the script even includes an additional example where Cy grooms Lila as Ruby-receiving successor to Joanie.)

And, Alan, you really don’t remember much about what’s to come if you think that Al takes some time to recognise Seth’s intentions because “[his] brain doesn’t work that way.” Al will spend half the season whining to everyone who can’t get away fast enough that he would rather be killed than show weakness. He has the same stubborn, prideful streak as Seth; only focused on him being in control rather than being a moral character. Personally, I’d argue the reason Al takes some time to figure things out is precisely that: because it uncomfortably reminds him of himself.

Late last season I commented that as Al became more of the protagonist of season one, Milch tried to downplay his unsavory sides while still retaining the “air” of a criminal character. Here, we get several good examples of the kind of techniques he used to do that. First comes the “I could totally be a crime lord if wanted to. I just don’t want to” scene: when Alma’s gold transport leaves Deadwood, Al and Dan discuss how Al could easily steal all the gold. Second, we have Dan viciously beating Hawkeye. This is a well Milch goes to again and again throughout the rest of the show: Dan is explicitly shown as a violent, barely controllable creature, and because Dan submits to Al, we’re supposed to understand that Al himself is dangerous. And finally, when Seth brings up reasons why Alma shouldn’t stay in the camp, he suspiciously neglects to mention that Swearengen had her husband murdered.

As for abstract and remote discussions, I think the far bigger problem was that too many things INSIDE the camp were only talked of in remote and abstract terms. The plot Milch eventually came up with for the annexation was, when you ignore all the flowery language, fairly unsophisticated (and one that required nothing more of Seth than being alive). And in that light I can’t help but think that when Al talks of “dimensions and fucking angles” without ever being specific, it’s really Milch trying to pull a fast one, trying to convince his audience that his writing has more substance than what’s actually there.

Stray Thoughts:

* Charlie Utter’s attempts to save face for Seth when the latter starts crying remind me of a similar scene involving Howard Hunter and Henry Goldblume on Hill Street Blues. Sure enough, David Milch was a credited writer on that episode (“Death by Kiki”) as well.

* Hey Al, remember how, in the first episode, you chastised Dan for shooting holes in the Gem? Guess not, because now you’re the one ventilating the Gem.

* One minor missing bit from the script: when Al takes out the glasses early in the episode, he gets this nice line: “I’m going to do something now, which, while I do it, if you think to yourself, “My God, he’s a cocksucker,” that’ll be fine. But if you look at me like I’m a cocksucker, then you’ll be risking injury.” I can see why they cut it – “Yes. It has fallen to this.” works fine on its own – but I still like it.

* Another mirror image: both Al and Alma literally hold pieces of Bullock (the badge and the clock, respectively).

By: mr wu

06.05.2012 @ 11:05 PM

Hey Alan Mr Wu here. Love your reviews. Brings back so many memories.
It was such a joy to work on the show and when we were told we would be renewed for a second season we were overjoyed as it would be a reunion of good friends and skilled artisans.
Im not talking just about the actors, writers, directors, and such. But the hairdressers, the set dressers, makeup, wardrobe repair, grounds crew, drivers, stunt men, etc. We all had a great respect for each others craft and that came from the top. David Milch who not only was the total captain of our ship but father, teacher, mentor, and friend.

By: greg

06.06.2012 @ 12:52 AM

Did it feel good to finally getting some closure for your character in the latest men in black?

By: Hatfield

06.06.2012 @ 5:15 AM

Is this really Keone Young? We’re just overflowing with Deadwood actors on these recaps

By: youtalkfunny

06.06.2012 @ 8:08 AM

So glad to have you here, Keone, especially with Mr Wu playing a much larger part in Season Two…

…but since you really didn’t do much in this season opener, how about taking this opportunity to tell all of us sycophants about the “Who stole the fucking dope?” scene from Season One? I think it was easily the most famous scene from the series’ run, everywhere I went that week it aired I heard people saying, “One cocksucker, no two!”

By: mr wu

06.06.2012 @ 8:52 AM

I can just tell you that it was through Ian McShanes generosity that the scene exists today. He just went with it and kept his character going pushing me to greater exclamations of “cocksuckah”!! Milch was cracking up on the floor as well as the technicians behind the camera. Continuity (script personel) Gabby just was writing a mile minute writing all the new dialogue we were creating. When Ian Mac said “glad I taught you that word” they were all in tears.
I heard that “San Francisco Cocksuckah” is now included in the new version of the Oxford Dictionary to describe certain types.

By: Caren

06.07.2012 @ 3:16 AM

Mr Wu, you made my night, that just cracked me up. Thanks for the behind-the-scenes peak at one of my favorite scenes from Deadwood.

We will never see the likes of such great talent, doing such a great show, again. Deadwood was the best.

God, I miss those, c*cksuckers

By: Oaktown Girl

06.08.2012 @ 6:00 PM

Just want to echo what Caren said above. Thanks for being here and sharing your insights and experiences with us fanatics.

By: HitFix User

06.09.2012 @ 1:33 AM

Not to be a total suckup, but I love, love, love Mr. Wu. It was such a treat to see you in “Men in Black 3.” My husband and I turned to each other and said, “WU!” :-) Whenever I see the word “cocksucker” in print, I hear it in Mr. Wu’s voice.

By: Jim Beaver

06.06.2012 @ 1:47 AM

I may be the only Marine in history to say, “No, I don’t really feel like going to Guadalcanal” and get away with it. I’d hoped to conclude this ’round-the-world PR tour with a stop-off at Guadalcanal, partly in homage to my late father-in-law, comedian Don Adams, who was NOT able to turn down his “invitation” to Guadalcanal back in ’42. But I got worn out being on the road for six weeks and came home early. Gave me a chance to catch up on Deadwood episodes with a running start toward the Season 2 openers.

Although Ed Bianchi had directed a couple of episodes in Season 1, this was my first chance to really get a feel for him. Directing on DEADWOOD (or almost any Milch show) must be a weird experience for a director, for directors come in, do their directing, blocking, staging, et al, and THEN the creator of the show comes in and re-does all of it. And maybe then re-does it again. I saw a few directors (not so much on DEADWOOD, but several times on JOHN FROM CINCINNATI) sort of shake their heads and disappear into the woodwork, uncertain of their place or authority. But for directors as with actors, I think the most rewarding experiences were had by those who realized they were in the midst of something much bigger and much different than regular TV, and who embraced the opportunity. Ed was very good at that. This is not to say that the directors should be credited with less than superb work, but that it was done in a uniquely collaborative way unlike almost any other job they might have had. Those who bought in had, I think, an amazing experience. Those who didn’t, may have felt stymied. I never saw that in a director. But I did see it among some of the cast of JOHN FROM CINCINNATI. They weren’t happy working outside their familiar areas, and David wasn’t particularly happy with them. On DEADWOOD, though, I can’t think of anyone, cast or crew, who wasn’t in whole-hog from the beginning, nor anyone who didn’t feel blessed to be so included and so utilized.

I remember the long scene in the hardware store as being a difficult one in terms of blocking and covering so many people in one scene, and Ed spent a lot of energy setting it up for David’s approval. David came in with new ideas and new words, and a lot of directors might have felt that they’d wasted their time and been unappreciated. But Ed Bianchi isn’t that sort, I think, and he seemed as happy as the rest of us to be of use in vivifying David’s vision.

That scene was a long one–fairly long even before Alma and Ellsworth showed up. I remember the difficulty of timing our approach down the boardwalk to the store, trying to make our entrance into the store at the right point in the dialog we couldn’t hear. And, in fact, the continuity is a bit off in the scene as it aired, as you can see Alma and Ellsworth repeating motions and steps they’d already completed in the shot immediately prior. But most of all I remember that damn basket of goodies, which must have weighed 8 pounds and got heavier and heavier as the long morning progressed.

I brought my almost three-year-old daughter Maddie to the set one day and we ran into Ian McShane as he was coming away from shooting the end of the fight scene in the thoroughfare. His face looked like a burst tomato, and I worried a bit about my kid’s reaction. I said, “Maddie, this is Ian.” She glanced at his face and said, “Hi, Ian,” and turned her attention elsewhere. Didn’t make any difference at all to her.

At the risk of making this too much about me, I’ll say that “A Lie Agreed Upon” was particularly memorable for me because it was the first episode we shot after the death of my wife, Cecily Adams, during the hiatus between seasons. Thus it was filled with letting people know the unhappy news and with a powerfully affecting reinvigoration of the feelings of support and family I had experienced with everyone on DEADWOOD during the previous season’s personal ordeal. It’s such a dominant cliché to hear that this show’s crew or that one’s were “one big family,” but I got to test that pretty intensely on DEADWOOD, and a family like that one we should all have.

It’s so much fun to see Ian’s on-screen impersonation of Billy Sanderson’s E.B. Farnum. Considering the world-class mimic who’s also in the scene, Titus Welliver, Ian’s impression is wonderful and I’m so happy they left it in. On so many shows, something like that would be either cut or discouraged because it didn’t quite fit familiar formulaic patterns. I’m frequently amazed at what gems get tossed aside because TPTB get nervous about anything they haven’t seen before.

Watch Kim Dickens’s amazing display of need conflicting with appearances when she can’t make up her mind whether to stay or go in her friend’s room when the new girls are about to arrive. I think Kim is one of the unsung maestros of this show, with some of its truest moments to her credit. Her work staggers me.

Same thing goes for Earl Brown’s Dan Dority, so tough, yet so vulnerable to Swearengen’s favor or lack thereof. It’s really rich work, at its best in this season opener.

I was happy that Ellsworth got a bit of a clean-up for the second season, as befitted his new position managing the Garret mine. Nobody got to stay clean on this show, but I was happy to stay a bit clean-ER. Costume designer Janie Bryant (who now designs MAD MEN) gave me a weird lapel ornament, some kind of miniature shaving-brush-looking thing that none of us could ever figure out what it was. But it showed up on my new outfit in this first episode. Still don’t know what it was.

Not terribly enlightening, this commentary, but my best recollections of these first two of season two. Oh, yes, take note that the dining area of the Grand Hotel is much larger after Season 1. I think they got tired of shooting so many scenes in such a tiny space that they just expanded it and hoped no one would notice. Lot of that going on in TV.

Jim Beaver

By: missalissa

06.06.2012 @ 5:04 AM

Alan’s observations remain excellent, and your unique, thoughtful perspective is unbelievably cool to have. Thank you for sharing with us.

By: youtalkfunny

06.06.2012 @ 8:04 AM

My God, you write beautifully, Jim Beaver!

I knew Don Adams was a Marine (imagine having HIM for your DI?), but was shocked to learn on his Wikipedia page that he was the only one in his platoon to survive Guadalcanal! And he only “survived” it by catching some exotic disease early on that left him hospitalized for a year! No *wonder* you bailed on your own Guadalcanal trip!

By: mr wu

06.06.2012 @ 8:44 AM

Hey Jim! Long time. Did you know I did get to work with Don, your father in law, on the New Get Smart with Barbara Feldon. It was a resurrection that lasted a short season. Andy Dick was also in it. Miss you c#*ks&ck$rs!

By: Jim Beaver

06.07.2012 @ 6:37 AM

Hey, Keone! Hope all is well with you, brother!

By: adama1843

06.23.2012 @ 3:04 AM

So I’ve just caught up and watched these two episodes. Something not mentioned, and if it has been in a later episode review, I apologize. Brent Sexton (Stan Larsen on “The Killing”) plays the Number 10 bartender who shot Bummer Dan. I understand if you’ve blocked “The Killing” from your mind.

By: John

11.24.2013 @ 10:08 AM

I’m still confused or am I stupid as to why Adams is supposed to be annoyed with Hawkeye it’s clear Dority is jealous of Adams and hates Hawkeye accordingly that explains him beating him to some level but does anyone understand why Adams is annoyed that Hawkeye has been away from Deadwood camp and is there any other reason why Dority beats up Hawkeye? Please enlighten me thanks

By: Jamie

07.06.2014 @ 4:05 PM

Dority beats up Hawkeye because he knows Swearengen doesn’t care in the slightest about him, whereas he would look askance if Dority took on Adams.